City & Suburban Trends: Sometimes it Helps to Look at the Data

Jonathan Weber writes that "Most demographic and market indicators suggest that growth and development across the country are moving away from the suburban and exurban fringe and toward center-cities and close-in suburbs," in an article for MSNBC entitled Demographic trends now favor downtown: Growth across the country moves away from suburban and exurban fringe.

The case is apparently furthered by the obligatory reference and photograph of The Model, Portland, Oregon. However, even in Portland, the suburbs are doing far better than the core. Since 2000, the suburbs have gained 106,000 domestic migrants, while the core county (Multnomah) has lost 4,000 domestic migrants. The IRS micro-data further indicates that the core continues to lose net domestic migration to the suburban counties.

It appears that the only trend indicating that the suburbs are losing out to central cities is the exponential increase in articles blindly parroting “death of the suburbs” dogma.

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I don't agree that domestic migration proves that "the suburbs are doing far better than the core." If 2,000 single adults move to Portland and 1,000 families move to the suburbs, there would be net negative domestic migration in terms of population, but a net increase in households and demand for housing units.

This article seems to imply that people are moving away from Portland, when in reality there has been a boom in housing construction there over the last decade. I would venture to guess that a demographic trend of young, childless adults moving to the city may explain a good part of the reason why.

(1) and (2): Your data is right and does not contradict anything in my article.

Here is the latest available data. The city grew 3 percent from 2000 to 2007; while the suburban areas of Multnomah County (outside the city) grew 12 percent over the same period (city estimates for 2008 will not be available from the Bureau of the Census for a few months). Overall, Multnomah County, including the city of Portland, grew 8 percent from 2000 to 2008. The suburban counties outside Multnomah grew 17 percent from 2000 to 2007.

(3) Portland’s 1990s growth was principally due to annexations. There was a large annexation to the southeast in the early 1990s, which added people who already were living there. Moreover, both in this annexation area and in another 1980s annexation (east and northeast), there was substantial greenfield growth in the 1990s. This is not core densification, which was the subject of the article.

(4) The only county to county migration data is from the Internal Revenue Service. The Bureau of the Census provides “net” migration data, but does not indicate where the people moved to or where they moved from. Lastly, we try to indicate data sources in all of our work.

1) Portland's main population gain from 1980s-90s was from annexations, however, 1990s-2000s was not primarily annexations. Washington and Clackamas Counties have both added a reasonable amount of people through annexations as well.

2) If your article is about core-city demographics, it seems erroneous to use a "wide" county such as Multnomah, considering it encompasses other cities like Gresham and Troutdale, which are very east of downtown. Many of the major cities of the metro area (in Washington, Clackamas, and Clark counties) are closer to the downtown core of Portland than some of the cities inside Mult. Co itself, which I feel would be pertinent to note when calling it a "core" county (even though Portland is home to it).

3) Of the 4,000 domestic migrants lost by Multnomah, how many were actually in the "core city"?

4) I was just curious if you had a direct link to the data you used that may be obtainable online. It sounds interesting.